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About

Tom Killestein is an observational astrophysicist at the forefront of time-domain astronomy, specializing in the electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational-wave sources. As a key member of the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) collaboration, Killestein has played a central role in designing, constructing, and commissioning a global network of wide-field, robotic telescopes dedicated to rapidly identifying optical counterparts to gravitational-wave detections. His work bridges the gap between gravitational-wave observatories like LIGO and Virgo and the optical sky, enabling real-time, multi-messenger discoveries. The flagship paper on GOTO, published in 2024, already accruing over a dozen citations, highlights the culmination of nearly a decade of instrumentation and survey strategy development. Killestein’s contributions are critical to the operational success of GOTO, which now provides rapid, deep, and wide-field coverage of gravitational-wave alerts. His research is helping to unlock the transient universe, from kilonovae to exotic compact mergers, and is shaping the next generation of multi-messenger astrophysics.